South City vandals seen leaping from car to car

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ST. LOUIS - A group of teens in south city are vandalizing cars but they're not slashing tires or busting out windows. In this case, they're leaping from one car to the next, leaving large dents in the hoods, roofs and trunks.

Alderman Shane Cohn said the teens have been vandalizing Dutchtown, Carondelet and Mt. Pleasant.

Some of the incidents have been caught on surveillance cameras.

"We were mad obviously because we saw these huge dents in our car and knew," Martha Roulston said they knew their surveillance cameras would show them how the dents got there. When they reviewed the footage, they watched a group of teens jumping on top of hers and her husband's cars.

The damage to their cars totaled $6,000.

Roulston said the next day, the teens came back.

"We confronted them and said you're the kids who jumped on our car we have you on camera, so then they jumped on our cars again in front of us," she said. "They thought it was really funny."

The same group is believed to have put a dent in Craig Shinabargar's truck.

"They came by and were bragging about having done it to me. Like 'we're the kids that jumped on your truck," Craig Shinabargar said.

He installed surveillance cameras just on time to catch the vandals come back and bounce a crater of a dent into his girlfriend's car.

The vandalism is not just causing damage to people's cars but also to the victim's lives.

"I work hard for a living and sometimes barely making it," said Shinabargar. "And with the health problems my girlfriend is going through right now, she's on the kidney pancreas transplant list," he added.

"I have a feeling that they just don't care they really don't care," said Roulston.

Roulston said she's heard of the same group assaulting at least two other people, in one case, they allegedly threw bricks at an elderly person.

Alderman Cohn met with police to discuss the crimes Monday. Neighbors are hopeful police will put an end to the vandalisms soon